JOAN OF ARC
exact meaning of the Prophets. When she was watching
the village herds for her father—a communal duty taken
in turn—and the church bells sounded, "the sweet Voices
of Heaven" to the folk of the Middle Ages, she knelt and
crossed herself; the parish bell-ringer told how the small
girl would scold him when he failed to sound compline
and promised him her own little ration of cakes if he
would do better in future. Sometimes it was noticed
that she quietly disappeared from the midst of her games,
and a playmate who marked what she then did called
it "drawing apart and speaking with God." On
Saturdays she would trudge up the hill to offer a candle
in the chapel of Our Lady of Bermont, and on feast
days she would go even farther afield: every holy place
within reach, however obscure or unfrequented, knew
the sturdy, brown-faced, black-haired child.
Now and then a boy laughed at her for her excessive
devotions: one would like to know whether she resented
it or not, and how, but the record does not say. He
probably did not laugh very often or long, for she appears
to have been well able to take care of herself, then as
later; she certainly does not seem to have been a mere
round-eyed bystander in the bloody battles fought with
stones between the young Armagnacs (the party name of
the French loyalists) of Domremy and the infant Bur-
gundians of Maxey on the other side of the river. Jingo
sentiment runs high with the normal child during a war,
and Joan was no exception: she once coolly proposed to
cut a local Burgundian's head off as a traitor. In fact
it is as a normal child in all respects except for that rare
religious intensity that she appears in the recollections of
her contemporaries.
The focus of the village's outdoor life was the Tree of
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